


he is the dragon's treasure hoard

by andthentheybow



Series: of false gods and fake kings and everything in between [5]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, GeorgeNotFound-centric (Video Blogging RPF), Minecraft IRL, Non-Linear Narrative, Platonic Soulmates, dream may be a god but george isn't exactly human either, idk if this counts as angst but im gonna say it does, if it counts as angst it also counts as hurt/comfort, way more of a character study than the others
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:28:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27692123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andthentheybow/pseuds/andthentheybow
Summary: he’s been jumping from world to world for so long that he isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to stop. inertia says that things in motion tend to stay in motion, and he doesn’t have roots tying him down, so there’s nothing to stop him.somewhere along the way, he gets his roots. the dragon claims him and the demon saves him and the fire spirit keeps him going. he is meant to play the supporting role, and he will, he likes it that way.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound & Darryl Noveschosch & Sapnap, Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF), GeorgeNotFound & Darryl Noveschosch, GeorgeNotFound & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF)
Series: of false gods and fake kings and everything in between [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2001208
Comments: 33
Kudos: 204





	he is the dragon's treasure hoard

**Author's Note:**

> don't be creepy about content creators, these are my interpretations of their personas, if they're uncomfortable this will be deleted, etc etc
> 
> i wrote this in one sitting and it kinda got away from me oops

he does not know how it happens, but it does. 

one moment he is a nobody, error-code 404-not found, jumping from world to world and changing it as he goes, controlling mobs and the environment alike, shaping the way it works to his advantage, to make merely surviving more of a challenge than it already is. the next moment he is part of an epic war that he leaves alone in favor of building a house.

he was not born to write the show, he was born to edit it. he was not born to create the world, he was born to change it. he was not born to slay the dragon, he was born to be the support. he was born to build the house, not to burn it down.

he was born to support his best friend as he kills the dragon, over and over and over again, changing the world to make things harder, hunting him down, hands stained with purple blood. he sees the protective, borderline possessive look in dream’s eyes, hundreds of dragons later, as he slays the endermen going after them. dream has killed so many dragons that he has started to become one, and he is the dragon’s treasure hoard.

he does not know how it happens, but it does. he may as well accept it.

-oo-

he’s been jumping from world to world for so long that he isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to stop. inertia says that things in motion tend to stay in motion, and he doesn’t have roots tying him down, so there’s nothing to stop him.

somewhere along the way, he gets his roots. the dragon claims him and the demon saves him and the fire spirit keeps him going. he is meant to play the supporting role, and he will, he likes it that way. but just because he plays the supporting role doesn’t mean his role is any less important, or any less mysterious, than the others.

somewhere along the way, he adopts the goggles, because they hide his eyes. more specifically, they hide the layer of glowing white that covers both eyes, a sheen that he says is due to his colorblindness, but is really because he is not quite human. normal humans can’t change the very code of the world with a practiced twist of the wrist. he is no god, but he is no human, either.

his eyes do not glow bright white like the demon-creature that finally stops him. the creature seems to be made of night, white eyes piercing into his very soul, gripping his shoulders tightly. he resists the urge to jump worlds again, because the thing looking at him is very clearly not human.

“i’ve seen you here before,” the demon says, “only for a moment. who are you?”

it has been so long since he has talked that he doesn’t know how to make his vocal cords work, how to form words, but he manages to choke out the first thing that comes to mind. “error code 404,” he says, hands reaching up to grab at his throat as it screams in the discomfort of disuse. “not found.”

“not found,” the demon repeats, and yeah, this creature is a demon. his wings are hidden, glamored away, bright teeth grinning. “hello, not found. i’m bad.”

he learns very quickly, in the next few days, that bad is anything but bad. he may be a demon, but he is possibly the kindest creature he’s ever met. bad allows him to stay in his house, in his world, for as long as he wants. he does not take the goggles off, but he does tell bad that his name is george.

“george not found,” bad says with a smile, and just like that, that’s who he is.

-oo-

who he is is this: a follower, a fighter, a friend. he doesn’t mind any of these roles in the slightest. he will follow dream to the ends of the earth, he will fight to the death to protect his friends, he will do anything to keep them safe, he will do anything they ask, and they will do the same for him.

so when dream tells him to run for president of l’manberg, and he asks why, he already knows that he’s going to do it.

“they need someone to knock them down a peg,” dream says. “if you run, other people might run. it’ll split their vote, and we can get our land back.”

“schlatt’s asking to be let back in,” dream adds after a long moment. “he might try something, too. we could team up with him, show them who’s boss.”

dream doesn’t care about the land. he doesn’t care about blatant displays of power, as much as he pretends otherwise. he cares about chaos, and if they get the l’manberg land back, if they let schlatt in, wilbur and tommy will revolt again, and they’ll have all the chaos in the world. so when quackity asks him if he’ll be his running mate, he says yes without hesitation.

dream subtly suggests a coalition with schlatt. he brings it up to quackity, and quackity agrees. they meet with schlatt to discuss-

and they win.

he isn’t there for the victory, because in all honesty, he doesn’t care. he’s doing this for dream and for dream only, because chaos is one of the few things that makes dream happy, and he knows this will bring dream chaos. but for the election itself, he’s in a different world, testing out the effects of darkness, limiting vision so one can only see the immediate area. he comes back and quackity’s yelling at him that they won, and fuck, now he actually has to do something.

he becomes schlatt’s bodyguard, essentially, and he doesn’t hesitate when it comes to letting his boredom show on his face. he is not schlatt’s follower, he is dream’s. he is not schlatt’s fighter, he is sapnap’s. he is not schlatt’s friend, he is bad’s.

he goes back to jumping worlds.

-oo-

he has just jumped from bad’s world for the first time since he arrived, and he comes back three weeks later to find bad and skeppy eagerly waiting for them. there’s a man standing at bad’s side, and instantly, he knows that this man is not human. despite the crude white mask covering his face, the way that he stands exudes the essence of a god. he practically reeks with power, and it’s almost enough to send him back to jumping.

“george!” bad cries happily. “welcome back!”

george learns that the green-clad man’s name is dream, and he does not take off his mask. he’s a speedrunner, someone who creates worlds just to defeat dragon after dragon after dragon. he learns that dream creates the worlds himself, alone, which is the second sign that he is a god. even bad had help creating his world, skeppy and a6d behind him feeding him power the whole time. dream waves his hands and they jump and there’s a new world that he made with a snap of his fingers.

they become best friends almost instantly. dream creates the worlds and george changes them, and they play hundreds of games of manhunt that they eventually drag sapnap and bad into. it’s shortly after dream learns that he is colorblind that he takes off the mask in front of him. his face is covered in scars, scars that run over both eyes and across his nose, marring his cheeks and his lips and his forehead. and he does not need to see color to know that dream does not wear the mask to hide the scars, he wears it to hide his eyes.

sapnap describes dream’s eyes as the most vibrant and unnatural shade of emerald green that he has ever seen. george does not see green, he sees gold, glowing and brilliant and containing a hundred thousand suns, the knowledge of too many lifetimes and not enough. this is the third sign that dream is a god, undeniable proof, but he does not bring it up. he does not ever bring it up.

dream graces him by lifting the mask, so he graces dream by lifting the goggles. his eyes do not glow white like bad’s, but dream still stops, hesitates. he knows that he looks blind, glassy eyes staring at nothing and everything, which is why he wears the goggles. he is not blind, he is the opposite; he sees too much. dream brushes it off. he puts the goggles back on.

-oo-

it’s not that he dislikes the members of l’manberg. it’s that dream tells him that they’re going to war, so he goes to war. simple as that. he’s good friends with them, honestly, but he is dream’s follower, not wilbur’s. he will not allow himself to be manipulated like tommy and tubbo, he will not allow himself to cave in like eret.

and yeah, maybe it’s a little fucked up, that he kills the kids so many times. but the kids try to kill him just as hard, screaming insults and hurling stones and carrying swords that are too heavy for their small hands. he tries to make their deaths as quick and painless as possible.

they are too young to know the pains of war. they are too young to be fighting against a god and his followers. they are painfully, painfully mortal, so mortal that they are practically immortal. he spares them as much as he can. sapnap and dream, who were built on chaos, do not.

-oo-

it is a common theme, he thinks, as he makes a rare appearance at one of schlatt’s cabinet meetings. schlatt is not a god, he is a tyrant, a false king on land that does not belong to him and will never belong to him, despite any election results. nevertheless, schlatt was built on business and power, and business and power have no time for children. seeing tubbo and quackity in their suits makes it harder for error-code 404-not found-george, he is george here- to remember that they are both just teenagers. seeing them flinch when schlatt raises his hands makes it easier.

tubbo makes a comment about easing up on niki, and schlatt’s hand is waving like he’s going to hit the kid, right there in front of everyone. george does something he never thought he would do, and he steps in front of tubbo. schlatt’s hand stops mid-air, waiting, furious. the ram pulls it back again, like he’s going to hit him.

“do it,” george snarls. “go on.”

schlatt doesn’t do it. because dream may not hold power over manberg, but dream is still the god of the world, and george is dream’s treasure hoard. he is under dream’s protection. to hit him would warrant karma a hundred times over, a hundred times worse. if he went to dream with a black eye or a handprint on his cheek, dream would turn manberg into a crater without hesitation, and schlatt knows it.

the meeting ends, and tubbo looks like he’s going to say something. error-code 404-not found jumps worlds again before the kid gets the chance.

a hundred years ago, george asks dream why he agreed to the deal, why he didn’t just conquer l’manberg like they all knew he could. dream replies that they’re kids, and he understands. this is dream’s world, and everyone here is a part of dream’s treasure hoard, whether they like it or not.

-oo-

he and sapnap lean up against the walls of the white house, long hallways dark around corners, shadows creeping up on them. sapnap has snuck in to bring the latest reports of dream’s lands, about how quackity is safe in pogtopia and more people have been declaring allegiance to schlatt’s side. sapnap looks tired, and he suspects it has something to do with the latest pet skirmish. he heard about it in bits from bad and skeppy shortly after he returned from another world jump.

halfway through the conversation, he pulls sapnap into a hug. sapnap freezes for a moment, because george is rarely the one to initiate affection, but he relaxes into it and lets the hug happen. george can feel the presence behind them, waiting, thinking they don’t know he’s there. they both know, they both always know, because dream may be a god but they are still his best friends.

later, he is wandering the halls, and he sees schlatt staring at him. he feels the presence of the ghost of a dragon behind him, and schlatt nods and turns away. he and sapnap are dream’s, they are dream’s treasure hoard, dream’s to guard and protect, and dream will not let schlatt forget it.

-oo-

dream will not let him forget a lot of things. he forces error-code 404-not found-george to come home after too many world jumps, makes him rest, and somewhere in there he meets sapnap.

he and sapnap bicker like nobody’s business, quick to blame each other and just as quick to defend the other. sapnap is not human, either, not a god or a demon or anything like that. there’s a fire that gleams in his eyes that only he can see, flames dancing across his clothes and his headband and his fingertips. flint and steel comes a little too easily to him, and he thrives on their trips to the nether. he is a fire spirit, letting the blaze consume him and burn him to ash, only to rise again like a phoenix.

the two of them get on like fire and ice, tighter than anything. they scream at each other and they scream at others and when the time comes, they go to war together. he takes schlatt’s side because he’s supposed to and dream takes pogtopia’s side because that’s what role he’s playing right now. sapnap gets to choose his side, he does not have a role assigned to him, and after a few days of going back and forth, sapnap tells him that he is going to stand at his side.

he knows it hurts sapnap when he jumps worlds, but he promises that he will always come back, and he always does. he always, always does. and sapnap and bad and dream tackle him into a hug and he knows everything is going to be okay, he is allowed to have roots somewhere.

it’s almost funny, he thinks, that dream chose this to be his treasure hoard. a fire spirit, a demon, whatever the hell he is. an error. code 404. not found.

dream will not let him forget a lot of things. dream will not let error-code 404-not found-george get lost in the thralls of the in-betweens, shining purple portals that look blue to him. dream loves sapnap and bad, but george is special. he is the prized possession, the golden crown atop the dragon’s head, the brightest jewel in the collection.

he doesn’t know why, because it’s not like he can’t take care of himself, but the way that dream shifts in front of him protectively and hugs him tighter than anyone else and looks downright manic, almost, in the rare instances when he gets hurt, makes him feel good. makes him feel special, protected. dream has killed so many dragons that he has started to become one. dream tells them, once, after a manhunt, when they’re all piled on the couch, that sometimes he looks at them and thinks mine mine mine, and they agree. they are his. he is the god and they are his chosen ones, he is the dragon and they are his treasure hoard.

-oo-

the only reason he stands behind schlatt is because he knows, in the end, dream will end up back on this side. this is the side that will bring him the most chaos, and wilbur’s breakdown only furthers that point. if manberg wins, wilbur blows it up.

dream wants to blow it up.

technoblade wants to blow it up, too, only in a much more figurative sense. he’s never really interacted with techno, only knows of the blood god through stories from his brothers and the championship games and his infamous duel with dream. he knows that techno is an anarchist, that he’s called the blood god for a reason, and george sees the ending of the manberg vs pogtopia war coming from worlds away.

he knows what’s going to happen. he doesn’t need to be there for it. he hears the explosions and feels the earth shake and he sighs and continues on. he was born to build houses, not to burn them down.

-oo-

eret is the false king and they all know it. dream makes them the king, sure, their betrayal of l’manberg a small price to pay for the ruling title of the most prominent province in this world. but eret is the false king nonetheless. their crown and cape are real, but their title is not.

because dream holds all the power, and they all know it. he’s flashy with it, he’s cocky, because that’s how the world perceives him. that’s how it wants him to be. in reality he is soft, filled with admiration and affection for his loved ones, all ruffled blond hair and bright eyes in the mornings as he demands attention from him and sapnap. dream is hugs from behind while sapnap burns the pancakes on the stove and kisses to the forehead as george attempts to alter battle plans. his softness does not change the fact that he is the most powerful being in the land, the only god, and the title of king is dream’s and dream’s alone.

so it makes sense that when eret declares loyalty to pogtopia, officially, this time, dream strips the title of king away. eret was the false king and everyone knew it, and now it was official. dream takes the title of king and does not crown himself with it, he crowns his treasure hoard.

and so error-code 404-not found-george ascends to the throne, dream and punz on either side in their netherite armor, gleaming with the tell of enchantments, and he is the king. he is the closest thing to a real king that this place will ever have, because he knows diplomacy and war and dream. he knows dream and he loves dream, and dream knows him and loves him, and the crown is something that dream will actually trust him with. this land is something that dream will trust him with.

he is the dragon’s treasure hoard. he is the god’s chosen one. he is the king.

-oo-

he is an error, code 404, not found.

he does not know who he is, he does not know why he is here, but he is. he allows himself to place his roots in bad’s world, in dream’s world, so that he has something to return to. he allows himself to scream his lungs out as dream chases him down, he allows himself to jump on sapnap’s back after some prank, he allows himself to break down to bad after too many jumps in rapid succession. he changes and edits and plays the supporting role, and dips between the edges of worlds, error code 404, not found.

found. found when sapnap drags him away from battle plans into bed because the three of them have long since given up on pretending they don’t love physical affection. found when dream gets that protective glint in his eyes as he stands between him and a threat and effortlessly takes down the world to keep him safe. found when bad welcomes him home and screams at them to watch their language and plays the peacemaker in every argument they have.

he lets himself be found. he lets himself be more than an error. he is the dragon’s treasure hoard, which makes him valuable, it makes him rare, it makes him real and solid and rooted to the ground with the people he loves. he is error-code 404-not found-george, he is george, he is the dragon’s treasure hoard, the god’s chosen king, dream and sapnap and bad’s best friend. he is the changer of worlds, a follower, a fighter, a friend. he places his roots with the ones he follows, the ones he fights for, his friends.

and he does not know how it happens. but it does.

**Author's Note:**

> comments/kudos/etc make my brain go brrrr


End file.
